Sunday, 23 September 2012

Today is the 50th Wedding Anniversary of my friends Jean & Doug. Unfortunately we aren't going to be around to join their celebrations, but I do hope they have a wonderful evening.

Jean asked me to make a special card for her to give to Doug - I shared that card with you on 6 September - and she was delighted with it. The card I'm sharing with you today is the one I've made to send to the happy couple.

Using a couple of my current favourite techniques/styles - Clean and Simple (CAS) and Distress Ink applied direct to the base card. I used Scattered Straw DI then overstamped using black Archival ink, a stamp by Papermania and a sentiment from Dark Room Door (I do love this set of DRD sentiments). Although not exactly gold, the SS DI is quite a good alternative.

Tuesday, 18 September 2012

After working on my DT card for Cute Card Thursday last week, it got me into the mood for making christmas cards. You may have picked up from some of my recent posts that I'm a tad obsessed by fabric at the moment and my house is rapidly filling up with lots of fat quarters (and larger) in beautiful designs ! Given my current obession, I thought I would incorporate pretty fabrics into my cardmaking to create some festive designs.

I recently bought a piece of fabric which had lots of small squares of christmas designs, perfectly sized for adding to a card. I cut out each square and applied some iron on fabric adhesive, then attached each one to a square of cardstock. A great way to do some batch card making.

Recently I've been very drawn to using kraft cardstock again, I think using fabrics on this 'natural' card gives a very 'homespun' effect which I'm loving right now and is a little 'different' as a christmas design. After attaching each design block to a C6 kraft card I hand doodled around the squares and stamped a sentiment underneath. A very simple design, but I'm very pleased with how they've turned out. I'll share a couple more designs with you in the next few days.

Thursday, 13 September 2012

Like me, do you find it so difficult to make cards for teenage boys? I know it took me ages to decide what design to use for this card. At 15 - and already six foot four ! - he's too old for 'cute' images and not old enough for the regular sort of male designs. He is very keen on sports particularly Rugby and Soccer and plays Rugby in his school team so I opted for a football theme for his card and he is our own Football Hero.

It is quite a simple design but I don't think he'll be embarassed to have this card displayed on the mantelpiece ! Sadly, I won't be able to see him on his birthday as he lives a four hour drive away from me, but we will be thinking of him and will speak to him on the phone to wish him Happy Birthday.

That's it from me today, hope you have a great day whatever you have planned.

Wednesday, 12 September 2012

Every year I vow to start making my christmas cards early, doing a few each month to prevent the crazy rush to get them all made in time come November. So far I've failed miserably to get myself organised and this year is not shaping up much better ! Having a christmas theme for this week's challenge has prodded me into making at least one more to add to my woefully small stock of cards completed so far for this christmas.

Recently I acquired a great set of stamps and matching dies from a range developed by Sizzix and Hero Arts in partnership. This set is so cute, I just love those reindeer in their woolly christmas jumpers and the tree dies could be used to create bunting or hats etc, so I think I will use this set a lot.

For my DT card I stamped the trees and some of the snowflakes using Stampin' Up! Pear Pizzazz ink and the reindeer and more snowflakes using Cherry Cobbler ink, cutting them all out using the matching dies. I attached some of the diecuts flat to the base card and popped others up on Pinflair Glue to give them dimension.

The 'grass' green strip was cut with an EK Success border punch, I found the Merry Christmas ribbon on a craft stall at a local market and I think it's a pretty way to add a sentiment. There are touches of Stardust Stickles on the spots on the jumpers and snowflakes, sadly this isn't showing up on the pic.

I'm quite pleased with the finished card and will be using these cute diecuts on more of my christmas cards for this year I think. Hope you've enjoyed dropping by today, thanks for visiting.

Tuesday, 11 September 2012

Happy Tuesday Bloggers, today has dawned sunny but chilly down here in my bit of Cornwall.

There's a challenge running during September on the Craftbubble Craft Mad and Loving It group with the theme of "Movie Quotes". One of my favourite memorable quotes is from the vintage film "The Importance of Being Ernest" Youtube link here so of course I chose this as the inspiration for my entry.

I knew I had just the perfect stamp for my card, so dug out my set of KanBan stamps which included the handbag and this lovely sentiment.

For my design I turned again to one of my current favourite styles, Clean and Simple (CAS) using Distress Inks direct to paper. After applying the ink pad direct to the base card, I used Archival black ink to stamp the handbag image over the DI block and for the sentiment. The finishing touch was a small gem added to the clasp of the bag. This card will go into my stock of cards, the sentiment would be appropriate for many ocasions so will be useful if I need a card in a hurry.

Hope you like today's offering, have a great day.

Update:

I just learned that one of my SMASH* Book pages is featured on the official K & Company Smash Stories Blog - how cool is that ?

Wednesday, 5 September 2012

For my DT card I've taken the world 'Gold' from the theme. I was asked by a pal to make a special Anniversary card for her to give to her hubby on their 50th (Golden) Wedding Anniversary, which was perfect for this week's challenge.

I do love White on White (WoW) designs and I just adore these fabulous Marianne's dies. I created the sentiment on my computer, printing it out in gold, before cutting out using the smallest of the set of fancy square dies. I added this to the next size layer down using some PinFlair glue to give it a little dimension.

The central element of the design was created by cutting out all of the dies in the set from either white or gold cardstock and layering them up on to a scalloped 8x8 base card. The lacy corners were cut with another Marianne's die as were the flower and leafy fronds.

I wrote an appropriate verse for the inside and again printed it out in gold before cutting out and attaching to a gold layer, using the largest two dies from the set used for the front. This tied the whole design together inside and out.

I hope my pal will be pleased with the card I made for her and also that you'll feel inspired to enter a card for this week's CCT challenge, I look forward to seeing your creations.

Tuesday, 4 September 2012

Happy tuesday bloggers, hope you are having a great day. The weather here in Cornwall is not so good today, dull and cloudy but still warm - nowhere near as lovely as it was yesterday but I guess we are into September now and heading full speed towards Autumn.

Today the project I'm sharing with you is my very first fully completed quilt. Anyone who knows me knows I have to have lots of projects on the go all at once, I get easily bored and so like to have a variety of projects to choose from at any one time. This isn't the first quilt I started, I am still working on the hand quilting of my first one, although it is almost completed. Today's quilt was all machine stitched and quilted as I thought I'd try out both hand and machine stitching to see how I enjoyed both methods.

For some reason the colours in the main pic are a little washed out, they are much more vibrant IRL.

Here's another couple of pix of the quilt part folded, the colours are much more true to life in these pix although you still can't see the gold elements on the fabric designs.

I haven't attempted anything complex or complicated for my first quilting efforts, just plain old square patchwork and simple quilting.

The fabric I used was a couple of Moda 'Holiday in Kashmir' Charm Packs, they come ready cut in 5x5 inch squares and each pack contains 42 squares.

I thought the best way to start out would be with ready cut squares as I don't have a rotary cutter, rulers or large cutting mat to cut my own from larger pieces of fabric or fat quarters. Ready cut is definitely not the cheapest way to buy fabric, but there was no need to worry about getting all the pieces the right size by using charm packs.

I just pieced the fabric designs completely randomly rather than try to form an overall design and I'm pleased with the result. It is going to look fabulous draped over my red sofa in the lounge !

Thanks for visiting to check today's project, I'll have a card to share with you on thursday and maybe I'll have something finished to post up tomorrow.

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All projects published on my blog are copyright to me - I am happy to share my designs here in the hope that they may inspire you to develop your own ideas. However please respect my right not to have my designs copied or "lifted" or entered for publication, competitions, etc. Direct copying of any design shown on this blog is an infringement of copyright.